Lets get right down to business. After 7 months since my last brew day, I finally found the time to start the process of restocking the keezer. First up, a…. blonde? Maybe? I bought some specialty grains to brew with a little over 3 months ago, but for the life of me I can’t find any hint of a recipe I had planned to use them with. Was it somebody else’s recipe? Was it one I had come up with myself? Why isn’t it in BeerSmith (my preferred brewing log/recipe creation program)? Nothing in Evernote.
Last I remember I was considering making a blonde. But when I plug these grains into BeerSmith and try to come up with the rest of the recipe, it’s….. a little dark. Not a lot, mind you. But enough where I’m hesitant to think that’s what I could have been going for. Who knows! We’re going for it anyways.
Take the specialty grains, add a little 2-Row base, and add just enough hops to hopefully balance it out. And yeast? Well I have some standard US-05 in the fridge, but where’s the fun in that? What else do we have lying around? A jar of mystery yeast!? No, too risky. We’re already going out on a limb here. But how about this DIPA yeast? That should do nicely. This may not be a DIPA, but that doesn’t mean it can’t show a little character.
Brew day went smoothly, and I even ended up with an extra gallon and a half of wort after the mash that I was able to use for a sample batch of a different beer. Same grains, but this time with some powerful Polaris hops that I’ve been trying to find a beer to test them out in. So all in all we’ve got a blonde and a small batch of IPA bubbling away in the closet. Finally.